Eight months after MultiChoice launched its DStv Box Office digital movie rental service, the in-home, on-demand rental service is already being cited by some of South Africa's cinema chains as a contributing factor to growing pressure on movie attendance figures in the country.
Nu Metro is closing its second movie cinema within a year - the Sunny Park cinema in Pretoria - citing poor foot traffic. Fay Amaral, the managing director of Nu Metro told Business Day that South African movie cinemas remain viable entertainment destinations. She however specifically highlighted MultiChoice's DStv Box Office digital movie rentals as one of the contributing factors now playing a definite role in adding competition to cinema attendance figures in South Africa which remain under pressure.
Bruce Mubayiwa, social media coach at Chess Plains Media talked to Destiny Man about it. "The question I would have for Nu Metro is: to what extent have they embraced the new technology? If they were losing market share to the digital movie rental business, how flexible was their business model for tweaking? Are they flexible enough to consider making investments in the booming digital movie rental business?"
In a new attempt to lure more South African moviegoers, Ster-Kinekor Theatres which no longer wants to advertise its movie listings in daily and weekly newspapers, is launching Ster-Kinekor Cine Prestige in Johannesburg, which it describes as a "business class experience" cinema offering. The cinema boasts large leather recliner seats at R85 per ticket.
"With Cine Prestige, we are now able to reach an even wider market and are able to offer something unique and more sophisticated, loosely modelled on similar concepts seen in the UK and Australia," says Fiaz Mahomed, the CEO of Ster-Kinekor Theatres.
